Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday February 23, 2009 @12:01PM
from the so-long-suckers dept.

With so many people losing their jobs, the farewell email, letting colleagues and contacts know where you are moving and how you can be reached, has become common. Writing a really good one, whether it be funny, sad or just plain mad is an art form. Chris Kula, a receptionist at a New York engineering firm, wrote: "For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support." In May, lawyer Shinyung Oh was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby. "If this response seems particularly emotional," she wrote to the partners, "perhaps an associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts." Let's hear the best and worst goodbye emails you've seen.

I worked in a company once with a guy who was known for sending out long, rambling emails and overwriting everything he got his hands on. I was constantly trying to get him to edit himself better on fact sheets and the like. Well, he gets laid off and his final email (sent to everyone in the office) read simply "Fuck all of you! I'm outta here." I was so proud he had finally learned the power of brevity.

he gets laid off and his final email (sent to everyone in the office) read simply "Fuck all of you! I'm outta here.

Bridge burning can be a bad thing.

My last farewell email involved me making a list of everyone I would or would not engage in sexual acts with. Little did I know that I would be crossing my old coworkers as a contractor only a few months later. Talk about embarrassing.

It is generally bad form to announce publicly who you would and would not have sex with unless:

1. Specifically asked,
and
2. The answer is glaringly obvious.

I.e. "Would you have sex with Rosy O'Donnell?"

"Yes. But then she would be a necrophiliac."

If on the other hand you sent a little private note to each of the hotys in the office that said: "I never approached you because we are coworkers but now that we no longer have that barrier to contend with, do you want to go out with me? Being out of work, I can't take you anywhere fancy but I am a pretty good cook and I finally have the time to clean my apartment."

That would be cool and may go a far way to easing your pain at loosing a job. It worked great the last time I left an employer. Until these hotys started trading stories about the new boyfriend.

When I quit my job, I was being passed over for promotions by morons, I wrote a nice letter. Thanking those who worked with me and letting people know where to get me. I actually quit two weeks after I got promoted, but because I was passed over three times (one of the guy recently got fired for incompetence) I didn't care.

I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at. Leaving with grace is always better then leaving with attitude.

I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at. Leaving with grace is always better then leaving with attitude.

Indeed. This is certainly a case where honesty is NOT the best policy. Because I generally leave on good terms I've been offered consulting gigs with old employers and I get good recommendations. I also have been offered full time employment by former employers and former co-workers.

I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at.

I agree somewhat. It all depends on the situation though. Some places need a response. You don't need to be nasty (for the very reasons you mention), but sometimes you do need to do something. If only to keep your sanity.

Last place I left was so bad I left without putting in a two week notice. Only time I've ever done that. Showed up late, walked around and personally told everyone I cared about goodbye. Handed my boss typed up instructions on my project and how to use it so the next guy won't be screwed. Gave him my passwords and all that.

Then loaded up my PC, turned on active desktop, set my desktop to Badger Badger Mushroom, and walked out.

BTW the place was a madhouse. This was entirely appropriate behavior. The HR lady who did my exit interview? She was terribly unhappy about my unprofessional exit and lectured me about the appropriate way to quit a job. But. Two months later she went out drinking margaritas at lunchtime with the CFO. And...never came back. Neither of 'em.

At one company I worked for, upper management booted out a PR guy out but forgot to order IT to deny him access. He sent a series of company-wide emails that seem like they were being exchanged between members of upper management about their sex life with animals. Hilarious! Took about 20 emails before upper management decided that they had enough.

By the time you read this in the morning, I am sure that you will have heard of what happened to me. All for no reason. I warn all the summer associates this firm is a joke of what it used to be. Read the history. With a man like Jordan Schwartz in charge what can you expect. For those that do not know my mother has cancer and I asked if I could leave the firm next Wednesday to take care of her. I was

Too short, wrong tone. Any "Farewell" e-mail should be looked at as advertising for your now forced move to self-employment (I don't care if you're officially laid-off and unemployed, everybody on slashdot has skills that friends and family use for free that can be marketed to strangers to meet the difference between paying the mortgage and eating). It should be relatively upbeat, thank people for the privilege of working on their team, contain a very short skills list of what you did for the team to remi

I was at a company that had to cut either the IT manager or tech and chose wrong. They kept the clueless manager, while the tech changed the passwords on the way out the door AND sent the insulting email to "allusers". Once it became clear that the manager had failed to disable access to the guy he was firing and did not know how to reset the passwords, they fired him and rehired the tech.

Yeah, never rehire someone who insulted everyone on leaving. And never rehire someone with a known track record of sabotaging the company. Any company who thinks someone is indispensible this way deserves what they get.

Well now the tech knows that he can always threaten to pull another "tantrum" whenever management decides against him. Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer is only a good idea when you're not beholden to your enemies.

Not just geeks... Years ago I went into a tiny office to set up Internet Connection Sharing for their two machines. When I started one of the machines, it threw up about a dozen "missing system file" errors before finally booting. When I asked about it, they very nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, it does that. The secretary deleted a bunch of files after she was fired last month."

We had a salesman do this after the sales manager told him he was about to get canned before I had been given notice to disable his accounts. He knew the sales manager's password to our CRM application, logged on as him, and attempted to delete every account in the system. Then he switched to the shared file storage and started deleting every file he could get his hands on. That's when my boss called me and we shut down his workstation remotely. Then he started attacking us with a metal yardstick. The receptionist called 911 and the police showed up. He said he wasn't going back to jail and tried to attack the officers, at which point they tazered the hell out of him. Funniest thing I ever saw. We pressed charges for destroying data and assault/battery, and he plead guilty. I forgot what he was sentenced to, but last I heard he was out of jail but still unemployed four years later. Word got around pretty quickly and nobody would have anything to do with him. This is a relatively small town, so I don't understand why anyone would be so stupid as to do something like that.

We ended up needing one all-nighter to recover. Most of it was spend figuring out what exactly he had actually deleted, as lack of permissions had prevented most of it. In any event, I didn't mind, the sight of him doing the tazer dance in front of everyone was totally worth it. I won't advocate tazering people indiscriminately but he totally absolutely deserved it. You had to be there, it defies description how funny it was. He went from attacking people with a yardstick to quivering wreck on the floor in about as fast as you could say "quivering wreck on the floor".

Not to mention possibly career ending. Someone about 10 years ago was leaving a company I worked at, and wrote a blistering goodbye email. A few years later at another company, a fellow ex employee of the first and I were on the interview team. And guess who walked in!

Needless to say, he got a very short interview and absolutely no consideration. When asked why, both myself and my coworker said 'Unprofessionalism'

The employee is the supplier. The employer is the customer. In most cases, customers can abuse the relationship a lot more than suppliers.

Having said that, I'm sure that employers who abuse their employees pay for it when times are good and good people find better places to work. Usually the people who leave are those who can find other jobs - which are precisely those you want to keep.

That's a good point, but I don't think it's the only issue at play. There's also the issue of power, and big companies have much more power than individual people. When I buy something from Best Buy, I'm forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. If I work for Best Buy, then I'm pretty much forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. It's not a negotiation between equals.

And also businesses can hide behind an organization. When a company acts, it's not always entirely clear whether it's the decision of "the company" or the individual within the company. If I'm a manager and I want to make someone's life miserable, I can do that while justifying it as "policy" or "good for business". I can say, "Sorry, it's out of my hands. It's just policy." If the employee turns around and tries to make my life miserable, he can't hide behind his actions as easily.

That's not to say there's nothing you can do. There are strategies for managing relationships where you're the weaker party. But let's not pretend that power doesn't come into play.

I have found that big companies are just as likely to treat you decently and give you a fair shake if they have to let you go. I've heard plenty of stories from people who have worked at small businesses (such as start ups) who were at the mercy of personality wars and psycho owners.

That is very short-sighted. When an employee with 10+ years of tenure walks out the door he or she potentially takes things that cannot be replaced without an additional 10 years. You can't always hire someone with a knowledge of your systems and an understanding of your business and the ability to use the two to solve problems. In fact you have to wait until the first and second develop before you even know about the third.

Documentation and training manuals can only go so far. If you are consistently turning over your employees then you essentially end up with a temp force. You get people that not only don't care but they may actively dislike the company. The "anyone is replaceable" mentality is, IMO, one of the most organizationally destructive in America.

I think this all started with Neutron Jack Welch. The thing about good ole Jack is that his purpose, basically was to eliminate American manufacturing jobs and turn his company into something else that didn't do manufacturing. In fact, he turned it, General Electric, into yet another useless financial company, while the jobs that generated the real national wealth shifted overseas. In the future, I think he'll be seen for what he was, a parasite who reduced America to third world status and made billions doing it.

The thing is, if you are essentially just cutting your losses and planning on eliminating business divisions completely, you have no reason to care about the years of experience walking out the door. He's considered a success because he "made money," but he didn't make G. E. competitive with the Japanese. Here's a quote from an article, "I came into a company that had at least an extra 100,000, maybe 150,000 extra people. It was the early '80s. We were making television sets in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Japanese were selling them at the mall cheaper than we were making them." Jack Welch: 'I Fell In Love' [cbsnews.com] So, essentially, he made money from failure.

Well, we've had years of this as the U. S. transformed into a nation of middlemen, shady accountants, lawyers, and "would you like fries with that" type jobs. The U. S. is basically the B-Ark from Life, the Universe, and Everything, with all the thinkers and doers being in the Eastern part of the world now. Good for them, not so good for us.

Here's a quote from an article, "I came into a company that had at least an extra 100,000, maybe 150,000 extra people. It was the early '80s. We were making television sets in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Japanese were selling them at the mall cheaper than we were making them." Jack Welch: 'I Fell In Love' [cbsnews.com] So, essentially, he made money from failure/

How is it "failure" that he stopped making TVs that were overpriced and fired people who were not adding value? Where I come from that's called "success."

To be fair..Professionalism is acting with grace and civility......even when the person/company on the receiving end deserves a kick in the arse.

SO when the boss tells you to unclog the toilet in the bathroom you reply:"No problem sir. Would you prefer I use a plunger or the toilet brush as I am updating my resume and want a good list of what technologies I use in my work?"

You have an odd idea of what professionalism is if you think it relates to perks for the company. Professionalism is not getting angry with people because they disagree with you no matter which method they choose to employ to persuade people. It's arriving at work on time and in proper attire. It means doing what you say you will do and when you say you'll do it. These are not unpaid perks that the company enjoys, they make for a work atmosphere which gets a lot more work done so I guess you could say you are doing more work without getting extra money but its all work you should be doing instead of arguing about stupid things.

Professionalism has a lot of characteristics that obviously vary from profession to profession so I'm mainly focusing on professionalism in an IT position. You need to intelligently be able to defend your position at all times even when someone that has no business making decisions is voicing an opinion and just happens to have the ear of the CTO or CEO in my case. You must be able to illustrate the lack of common sense those that would disagree with you would clearly have through polite means often with careful politicking. You need to be able to demonstrate the business sense in your goals and what you are proposing, how will this help the company make or save money? It's mastery of a craft, confidence that can't be shaken when the wind turns the wrong way which it inevitably does. It almost means consistency in behavior.

In the context of this discussion professionalism is a warm goodbye email that talks about what you enjoyed at the company and most times includes alternate ways to contact you.

Was he a good employee at the previous job? Do you know EXACTLY why he REALLY got fired? Did he deserve it?

Being unprofessional is one thing, but sending a pissed off email because you were wronged doesn't really bother me, and 9 times out of 10 due to politics you really don't know why someone was fired. You may hear 'because they did XX', but thats likely just an excuse for 'he made me or my boss look stupid, which we are, but don't want anyone to know'.

So if you guys know for a fact that he was wrong and that he was a bad employee at the previous company, then fine. But giving him a crappy interview for something ten years ago that you don't know the full details of is unprofessional of you. Either way, 10 years is a long time and people do grow up sometimes. You could have just cheated yourself out of an excellent employee because you're unable to look over mistakes people have made in the past.

Like I said though, its entirely dependant on the situation, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume from the way your stating it that you really don't know what truely happened to him.

For the record though, your bragging about handling the interview the way you did, is extremely unprofessional, and pretty damn childish. You didn't even have the balls to tell them why you blew the guy off.

My appologies for not being clear, but the SA in question was not fired, he quit to go work for a dot com startup.The email he sent out was basically bragging about how great his new company was going to be, how we all sucked and were stupid, and he listed every slight and fault everyone on his team had. About two or three years later (2001 I think) is when I was on the interview team with another ex employee. He was not a bad SA, but he was not a fantastic one either.

So he burned his bridges and paid the price for it. Do I regret it? Not one bit.

And he told the guy the reason they blew him off -- he acted unprofessionally in a previous position. That's a real insight to an applicant's character that is rarely available. They'd bee idiots to ignore it.

Actually, it was two or three years after he left the company to go to a dot.com startup. His email on the way out was something along the lines of 'so long suckers, I'm going to get rich while you idiots work here, you all suck.." and insults to everyone he worked with. It was like he finally got to say what he had been dying to say for years.Technically, he was competent, but not stellar. He was about average for the role he was applying for, but his past history was a mark against him. There were better

. . . Good for the managers. Personal problems shouldn't affect their decisions. What, the managers should instead lay off a better employee because they're feeling sorry for this woman?

Also keep in mind that Law Firms are KNOWN for letting go female associates after miscarriages, or if they know that they are trying to get pregnant. They don't want maternity leave and dealing with moms and kids, but they can't fire a pregnant woman. Having a miscarriage can be a career ending event at some firms, because they know you want to have children, but you're no longer pregnant.

I was getting so down after reading his comment... But then I saw yours. Thanks.

Yes, on the one hand, there is some abuse of maternity and family leave policies. People think they should be able to shrug their work off on others and then still get the credit for it when they return, in terms of advancement, etc. As a single, childless woman, that really irks me. The other side of the issue is that it is in society's best interest for mothers to spend a lot of time with their newborns. It's in society's best interest to have children who feel secure, breast fed when possible, etc., etc. There is a middle ground. It's up to us to find it and to push for it, and not to be completely blind to one side of the issue.

Hi, big strong alpha Silverback male, father of large family, here. Have work gloves, will lift heavy things.

Sorry to put it this way -- cruel to be kind and all that -- but if you're sacrificing family for your career, you're a damn fool. If you're living to work -- and your job doesn't involve healing the sick, feeding the hungry, saving children, etc. --then you have missed the point.

Your job title will not cry with you in the night. It won't watch the sun with you in the morning. The company car won't care that your parents just died. Your subordinates won't look up to you, and the responsibility you have for them won't grow your soul.

Apart from that, I'm shocked at the callousness of the some of the posters here. Sometimes, it's just a matter of basic humanity. I'm a big strong guy. I don't mind pulling a double-shift if someone's wife just went into labor. I'm not made of spun sugar. Some poor woman has a miscarriage, I don't mind covering for her until she can get her head back together, and yeah, that might take a while. Some single Mom's kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, I don't mind watching her keeping her network in one piece while she runs to the emergency room. I'm not a helpless little girl -- I can carry a little bit more of a load for a good cause.

Listening to some of the thin reedy voices of the Ayn Rand acolytes on this board, I can tell they're just not ready to be husbands and fathers. I pity them for their loneliness, and I know if they don't dig deeper and find their hearts and testosterone, they'll never be ready.

The thing is, the original poster is correct insofar as "best" was put into scare-quotes. Pure captialist thinking defines "best" as in producing the most profit (or, collectively, the highest GDP, or "the best value for shareholders.") Not the most happiness, the most ecologically sustainable outcomes, the lowest infant mortality rates, the lowest suicide rates, the highest measures of contentment and satisfaction, the longest lifespans, or anything else.

It wouldn't put them out of business but if her work was decent before but has fallen to complete crap, you have a problem. It's standard problem business face after employee suffers traumatic personal life issue. How long do you let them heal? 1 month, 3 months, a year before you demand the same performance? What if they never heal? Miscarriages are particularly difficult one to deal with. At a job I had as computer tech, we had one lady who had one. She was gone for 2 months and when she finally came back, her performance wasn't great. She then got pregnant again and that was mess. She was at Doctors at least once a week if not more. She started to become ultra protective where she need someone to lift anything over 10 pounds for her so she couldn't even haul desktops off the user's desk without assistance. She would question our health if we even coughed and got mad at me when I went to doctor and wouldn't tell her why I went. One day she just disappeared and never came back and found out she was gone on medical issues and finally the company let her go. Officially, I think it was mutual separation due to medical problems.

The funniest "goodbye" email I saw occurred about 10 years ago. A guy down the hall from me was responding to a personal ad--probably in a "casual encounters" section. He gave, shall we say, a very elaborate physical description of himself. He also went into details about his various fetishes and sexual proclivities, as well as some choice moments from his sexual history. He also described exactly what he hoped to do with the person he was writing to, complete with various sexual acts and positions.

Unfortunately, when he clicked send, the mailer garbled the "to" line in such a way that it went to the company-wide email list. (The company-wide email alias was "world"--the email address he was sending to had "world" in it, and I assume he had accidentally put a space the middle of the email address, causing it to be mis-parsed.)

When the email hit everyone's inbox, there was a moment of silence on the whole floor, followed by phrases like "holy shit" and laughter. The last anyone saw of him was him ducking and half-running down the hallway with his backpack. He apparently thought he'd never be able to live it down, called HR later in the day to resign, and never showed up at the office again.

Speaking of "whoops" emails and people leaving. This morning I came in to my office as usual, checked my email and saw one from someone I didn't recognize. I figured it was some HR banter about the new office building we're moving to or some new corporate directive, but instead it was a specific message telling me that my services were no longer required.

I about freaked. Then I re-read the email. It had my email address on the To: line, but the email started out "Dear Martin" which isn't my name. Reading fu

Had to be at least 10 years ago for someone to use an email account used for work-related stuff to send such a message.

You must be joking.

The average person only has one email address, their work email address. They don't have Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo or anything else, they have one email address and that's their work email address. And when they switch jobs, they switch email addresses and everyone has to update their lists.

And when they're not at work, email does not exist. You send them something at 5:01 PM on a Friday and you're not getting a response from them until Monday morning.

And they only know how to use one button, "Reply All". They don't know what the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All" is, all they know is that they once used "Reply" and the person they intended the message for didn't get it, so they just use "Reply All" because that works every time.

So no, I don't doubt for one minute that this story is newer than ten years old because I work with people dumb enough to do this every day. Here at Slashdot we nailed this whole "email" thing back in the 90's. The average person hasn't and they also don't care. Some of them even view email as a nuisance they were better off without.

I'm an IT consultant - my contract was terminated early, and I wrote a tasteful goodbye email ("was great working with you all" etc. which happened to be true). Good thing I did - 3 days later more funding came through and I was called back!

Which basicly means you're on and off regularly, and personal relationships matter for future contract possibilities. If you haven't got the good sense to be professional then, you're in the wrong job in the first place:)

In response to the article summary, I don't think Shinyung Oh's upper management knew that she had a miscarriage. It's not like they were waiting for the worst opportunity to lay someone off. It sounds more like she had a basically really terrible week. On a side note I think her response was wholly unprofessional. Let your contacts know you are no longer working for said firm and be done with it. Don't make it a personal vendetta. Junk like that only kills your chances later on in the career path.

What happens if they held off for a month or so out of pity and then fired her? Does that get documented as well?

Yes, it does. You talk to her (manager to employee, with HR present). You tell them "Your performance has gotten worse, and if it continues we can no longer justify employing you. What resources do you need from us to help you get back to the high level of performance we know you can deliver?" You have one more meeting two weeks after that, letting them know that it hasn't improved to the p

We had a guy who worked in the inventory department send out a part notification. The part number was his employee ID, the description was his name, and the status was "Out of stock - Discontinued". He sent it out in the same format as the usual notification.

It seems to me to be more of an exercise in massaging one's own ego. I, personally, find it more productive to use a site like spoke or linkedin to keep connected to my former coworkers. No long winded e-mail necessary.

This is NOT the time to explain who you hate and why. It is imperative to be professional about the process (no matter how bizarre the situation might be). Your co-workers already KNOW to the self-promoting a$$holes are, who is sleeping with whom, the golfers, the entrenched dead wood, etc. There is a time and place to orchestrate a response, but it can wait for more favorable circumstances. If you're really pissed off, help find a new job for everyone who is competent and useful. But help yourself first. It starts with being viewed as a resource within your industry, and you can't do that if you have spent your time bad-mouthing anyone. Besides, you never know who you might be working with in the future.

We're a close group at work, and all get along pretty well and like working there, but people do move on from time to time. About a year ago, a friend sent a company-wide email with the topic "Out of Office", which is usually used if someone's emailing in sick or going on vacation. Took about an hour before someone actually read the email and saw that he would be out... permanently.

Now everyone reads all the vacation emails carefully, just in case.

The email has become tradition, with every subsequent departure using the same message, verbatim, changing only one thing... the first email said that he hoped the people at his new job would be half as cool; the next said one fourth, then one eighth, etc.

Mrs. Oh was excoriating the law firm's (more precisely the elite senior partners) campaign to blame law associates with a record of _excellent_ reviews for the associates' firing.

Why? She alleged the law firm was not bringing in sufficient business to grow (a partner's raison d'etre), that the firm did not want to publicly admit the fact, BUT, it wanted to maintain an illusion of grandeur so as to entice new elite-law school graduates to continue to apply as new associates.

The miscarriage, her exemplary reviews, one partner's unsolicited glowing! praise days earlier, his about face, her firing, her presentation of an NDA type document for severance pay at the last minute firing, her emotional rawness, her refusal to be stampeded at such a vulnerable moment, her outrage and refusal to submit to the law firm's fig leaf for its own hiring duplicity, her email to "the" partner, et al all make up the rest of the story.

Last heard, months ago when this broke, she had committed major corporation career suicide but she apparently did not let that stand in her way. She's of Korean ancestry and cute though married.

Many moons ago, I worked for a consumer hardware/software company that no longer exists...but their mascot was a professor. With an egg-shaped head. Ahem.

Anyhoo...a manager was packaged one day. He was well-liked by his co-workers and employees, but butted heads with the exec team. On his last day he wrote a lengthy email to everyone in the company detailing why he was very sad to see a company with so many good people and good products go to hell because of poor management, and proceeded to detail examples of what he deemed to be poor management. As he was packing up his desk and saying his goodbyes, he was pulled into the Operations Exec's office along with two corporate lawyers, and spent the last three hours of his last day apologizing for sending the email, and pleading his case as to why he should still be allowed a package, and not be fired outright and have any severance payments and benefits denied on the spot.

Back at Data General, one day during the debugging, his weariness focused on the logic analyzers and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. He went away from the basement of Building 14 that day, and left this note in his cubicle, on top of his computer terminal: "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

Your boss loves it when you write a stupid, vengeful email after being made redundant.

No-one likes laying someone off, unless they're incompetent or have it coming. So receiving the FU email after breaking the bad news makes the task that bit easier. They can go home thinking "Yeah, we made the right decision there, that guy really was a real douche and we never knew it until now", and sleep guilt-free in their beds.

So go ahead, write that email that tells all your colleges what you really think of them. Your boss will thank you for it and everyone else won't miss you once you're gone.

All goes well for a few weeks, then something big breaks. Lots of pressure. Rooting around in his desk, he finds 3 envelopes. The first is labeled "Open at the First Crisis". On a whim, he opens it and the note inside reads "Blame it on your Predecessor". He decides to take this advice and to his surprise, it works like a charm, management is satisfied, he is given time to fix things.

A few months go by and a something much bigger breaks, seriously disrupting operations. He is in trouble. At his desk, he decides to open the envelope labeled: "Open at the Second Crisis". He'd been saving it for something big, and this is it. The note inside says: "Form a Committee to Study the Issue". He does just that and, to his surprise, it works great. The committee wastes time and accomplishes nothing, but blame is diffused.

A few years go by. The third and final envelope is labeled: "Open at the Third Crisis". He thinks about opening it many times, but he waits, saving it for a real disaster. One day, it comes. Catastrophic failure. He takes a deep breath, tears the envelope open and inside, finds a note that reads: "Prepare Three Envelopes".

(I liked this story so much that I left a set of envelopes behind at one job.)

A few years ago I worked for a college at NCSU that hired me to redo their website. Interestingly enough another group at the college did the same and we were told to work together. This guy claimed to have years of experience in designing sites and print media... but couldn't even tell you the basic HTML tags for a webpage.

Long story short, I was fired for not working well with him but hired almost 2 weeks later for more pay at a better job, better office, and all around better situation.

He on the hand, failed to bring their site online, convinced them to implement a CRM that he could manage, deleted the ENTER site (15,000+ pages) not once, not twice but three times.

Applied styles around my SQL code and claimed that I didn't know what I was doing... but the best part...

*Drum roll please*The person they hired to replace me (wtf did they hire someone to replace me if he was so great)... quit three weeks ago with NO notice with the reason...

"I can't take Tom anymore".

I found this out when that college sent out major SOS requests to any developers who could help them fix their site. Tom had deleted it again...

I voluntarily left a "back-up" position I was given as an apology for my boss eating my budget and thus having to eliminate my original position in the same-ish department . I was somewhat bitter entering the position, but I knew I could make great changes in my new position. Little did I know that the supervisor was angry, paranoid, irrational, and rather cruel to some people. When I quit, I left her with a long letter detailing each of her major leadership and tact-based mistakes she made in the paltry 3 months I was there. I then told her how disappointing it was that she did not have the necessary leadership skills after 15 years in that position... also noting that my position having gone through 13 people in 5 years should be a clue.

When I resigned that position, it was required to turn in a copy of my resignation letter to HR. So I gave them a copy. "Somehow" others saw it, too. Those others liked it and expressed their condolences... specifically since the person under whom I was employed is an "untouchable" in our industry. She will always be there because of who she is.

I've left my job with one company by leaving all of my stuff in the server closet, a piece of paper with the passwords, and a note saying "Good Bye!" They bounced several pay checks, and delayed disbursing paychecks for several months beforehand.

The second time, I dumped my laptop and gear at the data center, and sent an email to the HR drone saying "I can't take this anymore. I'm gone effective now."This one, we had 3 Canadian contractors who made my life hell, by making it impossible for me to do my work. not giving me access, and fucking with my passwords. They kept their shitty jobs, I got a new one.

I left a company about one and a half years ago to move to greener pastures (well to be precise, same global company, different country, but I did still technically quit the old job). I wrote a fairly standard and "nice" goodbye email to everyone and they threw me a nice farewell party.

However, what I found humorous was the emails I RECEIVED as I left. Some were nice ("been a pleasure working with you, blah blah"), a minority were nasty ("finally getting rid of you - fuck off and don't come back"), and some were just incredibly surprising (cute girl: "I'm so disappointed I never got to sleep with you!"... damn, had I only known earlier!).

The best thing though was a large banner that my co-workers printed. As I was the "resident uber-geek", they wanted to try and do something they thought I might appreciate. They used some kind of online tool to convert ASCII to binary, and printed a large poster that was SUPPOSED to say "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011". Unfortunately, it got truncated somehow and ended up as "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111". Now, they all sort of expected me to decode it in my head instantly, so were a little disappointed when I didn't... but, being the "geek", I did so (slowly, but surely) and about 20 seconds later started laughing... they couldn't figure out why, and so I did have to eventually explain it to them. I do still wonder if someone deliberately truncated it at that point (there were other geeks there after all), but I think it's more than likely just a humorous coincidence.

It happened once for me, and everyone deserves one chance to burn bridges.

I was living in in the USA, there on a work visa. Unfortunately, my manager was letting power go to his head, making life a living hell for the entire lab. He had it in for me, and I just wanted to finish up some things before quitting (and leaving the country), so it was a race and we both knew it.

JUST before he was about to fire me, I handed in my notice--four weeks, to ensure time to complete or transition my work tasks properly. He promptly told me to clean my workspace and avoid touching the lab equipment or computers, so within a few days, I was forced to sit at my desk, feet up, reading Hugh Johnson's wine Encyclopedia.

When it came time for my exit interview, I was asked if something could have been done differently to make me stay. I pointed out that every person in my group had a secret file in the bottom of their desk drawer, detailing the times our manager had been abusive, unreasonable, or unfair to them.

Management eventually saw those files, and "promoted" the manager to a desk position with no staff or responsibilities--just paperwork.

I practice the art of saying goodbye via e-mail without e-mail. The people who care already know, or will find out soon enough. If I liked them and had a personal relationship I say goodbye in person, or failing that call them within a reasonable time frame. Almost every global goodbye letter I ever got left me scratching my head: Who is this person, and why do they think I care? I suppose it is different for a CEO or very high level executive, but the marketing folks really don't care if an embedded Linux engineer left the company. I definately don't want to waste my time sifting through E-Mails from people I have never met who have confused themselves into thinking their personal life is somehow important to me.

You always have the option of starting the job hunt as soon as you're hit by a pay cut - and as a bonus you get to keep some salary during that hunt, AND have a less crowded job market as undoubtedly some people will take the cuts rather than look for a new job. If you're rather start over anew then you don't have to wait for them to forcibly boot you out the door before you start.

Our HR department is kinda slick (or at least they think they are). Last year we didn't receive annual merit raises, but they PROMISED that they'd give them this year. Well, they did, but decided to implement 3 unpaid holidays this year that end up adding up to almost exactly what the increase in pay was. So net change in ACTUAL yearly pay was zero. Strange when as a salaried worker my stated salary is one thing but I'm getting less than that per year.:S

The problem with your logic is that with the economy in the toilet, one never knows which category one falls into. While you could find another job, there's no guarantee you could find one that pays as well for a company that you would be reasonably happy working for that is within a reasonable driving distance from your home. And before you say "move somewhere else", in this economy, being able to sell one's home in a reasonably short amount of time is also not a given.

In short, your notion fails to take into account that some people actually like their jobs and like working for their employer. At some point, after working somewhere for a few years, it is no longer just a job that can be so easily discarded. Where I work, there's a startling tendency for laid off employees to end up working there again for a different team within just a handful of years.

The notion of pay cuts to avoid layoffs seems perfectly reasonable to me. If anything, it means that the company values their employees enough that they hope to keep all of them. In my book, that says a lot about the company and its management. Either it means that they genuinely care about their employees (in which case you'd have a hard time finding a comparably good company to work for) or it means that they are barely able to stay out of bankruptcy and are too scared that the hit on their stock from announcing layoffs will put them over the edge. One is very positive, the other very negative. Use your own judgment on a case-by-case basis.:-)

Falling stock prices often contribute to bankruptcy because of lot of debt structures are at least partly short-term, requiring it to be rolled over from time to time, and creditors are less willing to roll over the debt when the stock price is tanking. They get nervous.

And layoffs announcements often cause a bump in share price when times are good or just okay, because it signals lower future expenses. But in times like these, when investors are nervous, unexpected layoff announcements can be taken as a signal that things are the company are worse than people thought. It signals that management thinks future revenues are likely to be lower, and that they are trying to cut expenses to help compensate.

I hope companies will switch to pay cuts over lay offs like HP did and like some companies in Germany are doing (nice there, you get a pay cut but you also get hours cut so you have more life to enjoy at least).

I'd argue that that is actually necessary to future economic development. As technology advances, it's natural that fewer people can get more done in less time. At some point that means that there's less than 8 hours of work per potential worker to be accomplished. The current scheme of firing some and keeping the rest working 8 hours is obviously not workable unless we want a permanent underclass with more guns than food.

Consider, if everyone in the U.S. took half a day off on Friday (or took every other Friday off), we could go from 10% unemployment to zero in short order.

While taking every other Friday off might be beneficial for other reasons, a reduction of worker-hours is unlikely to produce an equal increase in the number of hours available for others. The labor pool is not zero-sum.

the "lump of labor fallacy" is somewhat controversial (even the article you point to suggests that). While the pool of labor to be done is not zero sum, it is not fully elastic either.

Between the efficiency gains to be had through better rested employees and the reduced health care costs from insufficiently rested workers, and eliminating the inefficiency of taxing the employed to keep the unemployed from starving, it's quite likely that the increased administrative overhead is a wash.

I know a guy who was laid off and actually heard that he was laid off from the press.

I'll see your "laid off from the press" and raise you a "new Chairman of the Board at the meeting".

The government agency I work in has a Board composed of 3 appointed members. The year after I started, the then Chairman of the Board was at the first meeting of the year and, from what I heard, the opening discussions went something like this:

On April 1st a few years ago, my boss and I put together a mass email saying that another member of my team was leaving the company.
My boss sent it out to lend it credibility.
My teammate is Italian both in looks and in name. We stated in the email that he was leaving the company to go work for his "family business",etc.etc.
and that no one should make inquiries about it since the family was tight-knit and considered their business very personal, etc.etc. could be dangerous,etc.etc.
Thankfully he had a good laugh about it, but he did admit that he had some relatives in Jersey that wouldn't have found it funny.
We didn't make him the butt of any jokes after that.

"Farewell notes", unless specific, positive, and heartfelt - (Dear George, you were really a fantastic coworker, and I'm proud to have worked with you...) are simply ego masturbation of one form or another. Long-winded erudition just means you're boring AND egocentric.